Overwhelming Emptiness

One of the temples the group visited was Ginkakuji, the Silver Pavilion (that was never actually covered in silver). In 1482, it was modeled after Kinkakuji, the Golden Pavilion, by shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa as his retirement villa. We were not allowed to go inside the single building, but instead admire the grounds that the Zen temple is located on. The beauty that first caught my eyes was the arrangement of sand. Upon walking through the gates, a form made of sand and based on Mt. Fuji is present and about eight feet tall. Of course that is impressive, but I found myself being more attached to the sand behind the Fuji reference (seen above). The ornate lines could be described as nothing short of perfect.

I have noticed, in Kyoto anyways, that everything seems to be well kept and detail oriented. This caters quite nicely to my quasi-obsessive compulsive nature of the placement of objects. As I understand, this is referred to as shin, or being shaped by man. I especially enjoy seeing negative space in both the architecture and the art. This mixed with a very asymmetric placement of objects, or designs in sand could hold my attention for hours on end. The negative space is influenced by Zen concepts and ironically I somehow find it to be overwhelming at times. One of the many thoughts or terms we went over as a class before coming to Japan was wabi sabi. Wabi is a philosophical concept that is loosely (and possibly bastardized by this American) as acceptance of transience, or an appreciation of poverty. I believe sabi is more aimed as a description of time and how it affects man made things. Aesthetic characteristics of wabi sabi are simplicity, asymmetric and thought to be imperfect, impermanent, and because the effect of time, incomplete. I find myself trying to make a connection to wabi sabi in everything I look at, from the worn tread on tires of a bike to the cracking of paint on a wall.

Breathtaking Sanjusangendo

Upon entering Sanjusangendo one is confronted with an intensive sense of awe. With over 1000 human-sized golden statues lined up in perfect rows, one gets a sense that they are among an army of angels. Each statue is an individual production of a 3 dimensional image of Kannon, the Buddhist goddess of mercy or compassion (more popularly know as Guan Yin in China and the west). There is a large statue of Kannon 10X the size of the others surrounded by an altar in the middle of the temple. 500 human-sized structures exist on either side of this center piece.

The statues are carved of Japanese cypress. The arms and heads of the Kannon were carved seperately and then joined together with the bodies. They were coated with a lacquer and then were covered with gold leaf. 124 were made in 1164 when the temple was founded. The remaining 876 were made in 1266 during a significant temple renovation. Photography is not permitted inside the temple so below is a photo which I found online.


The architecture which surrounds the statues is also outstanding. The inner temple has a roof pitched for cosmetic purposes and in place of a flat ceiling, a white false ceiling has been built at the same angle as the roof. Sanjusangendo is also record breaking in that it is Japan's longest wooden structure at 120 meters in length.

The front exterior is comprised of large sliding plank doors and paper windows utilized for lighting and beauty. The rear exterior is a wall of horizontal planks and a wood frame windows decorated with thin vertical wooden strips. The roof is gorgeous. The gable ends are reinforced with pure dynamic triangular structures known as inokosasu (roof decorations). The gable ends are decorated with plates cut into floral patterns known as inonegegyo. They are quite the finishing touch to such a fascinating temple. Sanjusangendo is breath-taking inside and out!

To find out more information on Sanjusangendo visit http://www.sacred-destinations.com/japan/kyoto-sanjusangendo.htm

Ninjas are to Uenoshi, what the Cornhuskers are to Lincoln Nebraska.

From Kyoto to Kusatsu, and from Kusatsu to Tsuge, then from Tsuge to Iga-Ueno, and finally from Iga-ueno to Uenoshi. Roughly two hours to get to the city. On the train ride there I got the chance to see some of the most beautiful mountains I’d ever witnessed, with clouds literally rolling down them. We also got a view of the ocean and it was a little unsettling to be so close to both the ocean and the mountains. We could look out one window and see the ocean spread as far as the eye can see, then turn around and right outside the other window would be the foothills rising up to mountains that pierced through the clouds.

After getting off our final train it was just a short walk through the Iga Park grounds to get to the ninja museum. The scenery was once again absolutely beautiful and I could tell that the trip was already starting to pay off. We passed by the souvenir shop filled with allsorts of ninja related trinkets, none of which were actually very impressive.

Once in the museum we were taken on a tour of all the different kinds of secret passageways and hidden chambers the ninjas would use to escape from invading samurai. One of the more common ones was a simple wall panel that had a pole down the middle and could quickly rotate around. Our guide asked for volunteers and I happily obliged her. I attempted to whizz through the hidden passage, but as the top of the door frame only went up to my shoulders there was much more crashing and stumbling involved then what I would have liked.

After the tour of the ninja house we next got to travel around the actual ninja museum and try on some Mizugumo (special shoes used to cross the swampy moats of castles) as well as chain mail armor that they used for training up their muscles and jumping ability. The museum also held a large assortment of tools that the ninja would use. These ranged from the well known items like shuriken and the Ninjato, or ninja sword, to less well known ones such as a sort of bullet proof vest and special tools used to jam sliding doors so that they might prevent their targets from escaping. You could also learn some interesting facts that popular culture tends to smudge up, like how ninja’s actually wore dark navy blue instead of black so that even on nights where it wasn’t completely dark they could still blend in to the shadows.

When we finished the Museum we got to see a weapons demonstration where our two masters showed us how different tools and weapons were used by the ninja. This ranged from how well a Ninjato can cut through objects, to using the sheath and string attached as a sort of radar for finding people in the dark so that you can have the drop on them. We also got to see how a kurasagama and shuriken worked. The Shuriken were quite impressive. Especially since when looking at the matt he threw them at the shuriken seemed to magically appear imbedded within it.

After that we headed back through the souvenirs shop and had dinner at small bar with a ninja corgi on the sign. The food was good and the barkeep gave us a menu in English, which was appreciated. I was tired at this point and didn’t feel like working out the kanji. We caught the five o’clock bus back and got to enjoy the scenery once again, but this time with a sunset backdrop. It was even more gorgeous then when we head up. All in all it was a good day and well worth the trip.

From "A" to "B" (and "See"ing)

So the rain dried. The sun came to give us a real welcome and the smell of moist backpacks slowly left us. Clear skies assisted us in learning how to get across the great country of Japan. Before long, we made our way to Kyoto station and I marveled at the sheer scale of the monstrous transit center. More so than the fine restaurants and hugely populated walkways, the architecture of the station moved me. Taking a series of very long escalators to the top, I experienced a sort of vertigo while looking up at the rafter work and nearly ornamental steel. Perhaps it was the whole scale of it all, or maybe it was the extreme experience of depth perception that kept my attention. Like the last time I posted, I couldn't help but keep looking up (though this time with thoughts of “2001: A Space Odyssey”. I set my camera on the handrail of the escalator for the long ride to the top. Here's a clip of what it saw.




Yesterday, we took the Shinkansen for the first time. Also called a “Bullet Train”, the Shinkansen brought us from Kyoto to Nagoya in less than an hour. This ride was the first time I felt truly comfortable sitting down on mass transit in Japan due to my hypersensitive respect (I'm generally the last person to take a seat). With a small can of cold black coffee, my eyes were glued to the countryside; a high speed overview of some rural and urban sights. I took the opportunity to capture the following footage, and I realized; sometimes it's not what's at point A or B that matters, but what you see along the way.



Feel free to check up on my thread on starcityscene.com to read more about my adventures in Japan.

Hands on at Kyoto Handicraft Center

We had spent the day in intense heat, dehydration was abundant after hiking up to Ginkaku-ji, The modern air conditioned building of the Kyoto Handicraft center was a far cry from the classic Japanese architecture and garden of the Silver Pavilion.

The inside resembled a much more western store in appearance, the difference being here there was an abundance of cheesy but fun souvenirs and exquisite crafts that you really could only find in Japan. There were shelves of lacquerware, which are delicate gold patterns and scenes put onto boxes or serving dishes with a rich black laquer surrounding it. One of them had irises rising up the side of the box, blooming on the shining top.

The lacquer was something that was discussed in In Praise of Shadows by Junichiro Tanizaki. The mystery and the shadows is something that is aesthetically very important to Japanese culture. It is really hard to find anything with as rich of darkness, and plays off of the very little light that there is in a room. Even in the lighting of the Kyoto Handicraft center, which isn't the ideal lighting to see these creations, you could still feel how rich and deep the black was. Something I learned about when I was younger was how there are certain blacks that are natural and alive and then there are artificial blacks that are colder and more fake. The lacquer ware was probably the most alive black I had ever seen. It really shows how there can be so much in simplicity and shadows.

A Disparity of Beauty

When I arrived in Japan, I was fairly certain that I wasn't laboring under any false assumptions about the culture or country; I was proven wrong within a few hours, as we were being driven through Osaka to Kyoto. Nothing was as I expected it, and everything that I saw was disappointing. Through the night, all that I could make out were the neon lights of the big cities and that was, shortly, not what I had hoped or imagined these places to be like; they were somehow supposed to escape the classic features of metropolises. I couldn't see any nature or any ancient architecture, which was what my mind had been focusing on, and there was no identity to distinguish them from the cities of America other than the sparse signs in Japanese, and even then there was plenty enough English everywhere to subjugate this inkling of a foreign identity.

I didn't like what I saw, and I had the initial, impulsive thought of: What am I doing here?



However, things got better. Myoshinji was far closer to the images my mind had been forming, and in them was the beauty that I was expecting and looking for. There was that sense of sabi, of beauty in age, and the onlooker couldn't help but marvel at the sturdiness of these architectures. All of the temples and shrines that we have visited have this feeling: when we were led to the backrooms of Ryoan-ji, to the podiums of the Buddha and his disciples, there was a heady sense of the uncanny; looking into their ancient faces, I got goosebumps. It felt like the world was a moment away from animating these figures so that they may recount their tales.

But there's a stark divide between the astounding magnificence of these ancient infrastructures and the modern buildings that crowd them in. The latter are haphazard and grey, worn down, exhibiting sabi in what can only be called its ugliest incarnation. The outskirting commercial streets of Kyoto are the worst, flat and pitiful in their facades and looking for all the world like forgotten -- yet still habitually-used -- boxes. It seems as if the Japanese are so obsessively focused on the past, on the beautiful creations of their ancestors, that they have completely abandoned the modern world: it must serve its purpose, but they will not try to make it, in its own right, into a place of grandeur. Beauty is reserved for the ancients.



I don't understand this, not at all. How can there be such a gulf between these two worlds? Maybe I simply haven't seen enough of this country to understand, or to find the bridging element, but for the moment, I am perplexed by this place.

Juxtaposition of Old and New

While shopping in an arcade next to Nishiki Market, I came across Seiganji Temple, an old Buddhist temple in the middle of the shopping center. It was the last thing I expected to find while shopping for souvenirs, and it was amazing to find something so old in a building so new. The temple and the shopping center were only seperated by a doorway, but once I stepped inside the temple gate, it felt like I went back in time. I gazed up to see the giant ornate Buddha sitting in the center of the temple, then ascended the stairs with the incense getting more intense as I got nearer to the room. A priest came out and chanted and a man came in to pray.

I thought it was strange for a temple to be located inside a shopping center, but then I kept on seeing more old religious sites throughout the arcade acting as quiet spiritual havens in the middle of hectic, modern life. There was a cemetery, shrine, and temple where people could step in to pray and then walk a few steps out and buy some shoes. The materials clash, but in an interesting way with aging wooden structures and tiled roofs next to slick glass facades.

After thinking about it, the whole city of Kyoto is similar to that shopping center. It seems like everywhere you go there is a temple complex surrounded by modern buildings. Along the skyline you can see modern boxy high-rises alongside sweeping temple roofs. This preservation of the old while developing the new is connected to the Japanese respect for tradition and the sabi in Japanese aesthetics with appreciation of time and aging. Compared to Japan, the United States doesn't have the long history or the integration of the traditional into our culture. The combination of old and new is obvious in the architecture seen around the city, but is also seen in other aspects like women in trational kimonos riding the subway and old men using the latest cell phones. You can read Melanie's blog about other dualities she found in Japan.